Assessing the effects of duration of birth interval on adverse pregnancy outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa: a propensity score-matched analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Unlike high-income countries, sub-Saharan African countries have the highest burden of adverse pregnancy outcomes such as abortion, stillbirth, low birth weight and preterm births. The WHO set optimal birth spacing as a key strategy to improve pregnancy outcomes. Estimating the impact of short and long birth intervals on adverse pregnancy outcomes based on an observational study like the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) is prone to selection bias. Therefore, we used the propensity score-matched (PSM) analysis to estimate the actual impact of short and long birth intervals on adverse pregnancy outcomes.

Design

A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted based on the DHS data.

Setting

We used the recent DHS data of 36 sub-Saharan African countrie

SUBMITTER: Tesema GA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10083766 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature